“Don’t you think Coxey ought to get married?” Galt’s name for me had long been current in the household. “Coxey, here? No. Nobody would marry him,” said Galt. “But he’s sometimes quite nice,” said Natalie. They discussed my character as if I were not there, the kind of wife I should have and what would please Heaven to come of it. Natalie knew, as Galt didn’t, that this was teasing Vera still. Dinner was nearly over when Gram’ma Galt asked her terrible question. “What is the price of Great Midwestern stock today?” Galt answered quietly: “One-and-a-half.” There was no more conversation after that. Later when we were alone I asked Vera if the house had been pledged. “The mortgage was executed yesterday,” she said. “It’s roof and all this time.” “He doesn’t seem at all depressed,” I said. “No,” she answered. “That is his way with disaster. We’ve seen it before.” “Don’t you admire him for it, though?” “I hate him!” she cried passionately. The intensity of her emotion astonished me. Her hands were clenched, her eyes were large and her body quivered. We were sitting together on the sofa. I got up and walked around. When I looked at her again she lay face downward in the pillows, weeping convulsively. CHAPTER VIII LOW WATER i Well, the United States Treasury did not hang out the bankrupt’s sign. What happened instead was that President Cleveland in his solitary strength met a mad crisis in a great way. He engaged a group of international bankers to import gold from Europe and paid them for it in government bonds. The terms were hard, but the government, owing to the fascinated stupidity of Congress, was in a helpless plight. What Cleveland had the courage to face was the fact that any terms were better than none. It was fundamentally a question of psychology. The spell had somehow to be broken. The richest and most resourceful country in the world was about to commit financial suicide for a fetich. All that was necessary to save it was to restore the notion,--merely the notion,--of gold solvency. People really did not want gold to hoard or keep. They wanted only to think they could get it if they did want it. The news of the President’s transaction with the bankers, appearing in the morning papers, produced a profound sensation. The white money people denounced him with a fury that was indecent. Many men of his own political faith turned against him, thinking he had destroyed their party. Congress was amazed. There was talk of impeachment proceedings. Popular indignation was extreme and unreasoning. The White House had sold out the country to Wall Street. Mankind was about to be crucified upon a cross of gold. The principle of evil had at last prevailed.